Ashes of Creation

Ashes of Creation takes place within a medieval fantasy setting, blending imagination with cutting-edge graphics. We are putting the word massive back into massively multiplayer with unique and novel mechanics that will bring meaning to player action. Ashes of Creation will incorporate the best parts of traditional MMORPGs with innovative sandbox concepts. You will choose your fate at every opportunity. Questlines will open and close based on the interactions of the players with their world, because this is a world where choice is consequential. Monsters will roam and grow in ferocity as civilization disrupts the natural order of things. From the location of towns to the size of cities, you will determine the landscape of your world. It will be unique in culture, ecology, and economy.[2]

Ashes of Creation is an upcoming MMORPG set in a world of high fantasy where player’s choices will shape and define the world around them.[1]

Ashes of Creation is a unique take on the MMO experience. Our world structure is dynamic and built to react to the actions of our players. Cities will rise and fall, their populations based on the history of the world as the players create it. Quests will unlock as these populations gather, their needs grow, and secrets are unlocked. As the world’s NPC structure is established in real time, players will have the ability to destroy what they’ve created, paving the way for new development, new populations, and real change. Political strife and intrigue will play a very real role in the structure of your world. Gone are the days of static worlds, change is here to stay.[2]

Based on community feedback I decided to prioritize the alpha one testing phase and forego the castle siege Apoc testing until after Alpha One. This is a riskier development path, but demonstrating the mmorpg core systems became higher priority.[6] – Steven Sharif

We have a lot of work ahead of us. In 2020, we will be inviting you into the Alpha One test phase where you will get to experience the systems and mechanics of the MMORPG we have all been waiting for. We are excited for all of the data this will provide us with and cannot wait to make the iterations necessary to create the MMORPG of our dreams. The Alpha One experience will not be under NDA, so our glorious community will be able to watch along as our Alpha One testers take their first steps into Verra.[7] – Steven Sharif

In 2020, you can look forward to new blogs on classes, node types, freehold buildings and equipment. As well as, more in-depth videos that showcase a whole host of systems our Alpha One players will be experiencing in their testing.[7] – Steven Sharif

Nodes

Nodes are a pre-set location, wrapped in a zone of influence, in our world that can form into towns of different sizes. These sizes range from a small camp to a sprawling metropolis. The size of the towns depends on the contribution by players and how far they’ve advanced the Node. Players do not create the footprint of a Node, but within that footprint they do have the ability to own land. Players who are part of the government for a specific Node will have the ability to modify building types and services further, but for the most part, a Node will grow along its own specific path (think about this more as NPCs building these towns out, rather than PCs individually putting buildings and walls up). A Node’s contribution area is larger than the actual town itself, allowing for players to adventure while building upon the town. We call the contribution area the Node’s “Zone of Influence,” and it’s the area where players help to advance the Node they are in.[36]

Nodes are the heart of the world, they create the ebb and flow of life. At their core, Nodes are pre-set points in the world, wrapped in a Zone of Influence and surrounded by geographic areas that change over time based upon player participation. The world map is divided into regions, with each region containing multiple Nodes. As a Node advances, it influences the types of content within itself and the surrounding areas. Players do not create Nodes, but if they are a part of the government for a specific Node, they have the ability to influence diplomacy, and modify building types/construction and services within that Node. There will be 103 Node locations at launch, each with its own impact on the narrative and development of the world.[41] – Margaret Krohn

Nodes exist all throughout the world and the location of said node will determine its type; but this type will be... seen at the first stage of development when the first stage when a node propagates real-time assets in the world; is basically these NPCs, these merchants that come into an area and they offer services and/or you know of stores or whatever the deal may be. You will see the flavor of the node from those merchants. So if it's a military node you'll see military people. If it's... an economic node you'll see merchants. If it's a scientific one you'll see scholars; and if it's a divine one you'll see priests and clerics. So players will have a very firm understanding of which node is which type in order to know how they want to progress.[43] – Steven Sharif

Nodes are assigned one of four (4) node types, each of which contain unique specializations.[41]

Players will be able to identify the type of a node at its first stage of development (Expedition) based on its NPC population.[43]

Ashes of Creation allows you, the player, to decide the fate of the world around you. With each Node Type, you can change the flow of resources and goods in the world. Will you grow the largest Economic Metropolis and help guide the riches of Verra, or will you choose another path unlocking new stories filled with allies and enemies?[44]

For example, if a level 4 Scientific Node is destroyed, it will become a Level 0 Scientific Node. It will never be any other Node Type other than a Scientific Node. The location of these Types relates to the influences of the area around the Node.[41] – Margaret Krohn

Node advancement

Nodes advance by collecting experience from the actions of players nearby. As players complete content inside of a Node’s Zone of Influence (the area around the node), they contribute that experience toward the Node’s development. The experience given to the Node may then be modified based on certain Events and Accomplishments. When a Node reaches the experience required, it undergoes the process of advancing to the next stage. There are a few exceptions where a Node cannot advance even though it has the required experience - most commonly, a Node can not advance if a Node is a Vassal of another Node and would advance to the same stage as its Parent Node.[45] – Margaret Krohn

The Development Area of a Node is where civilization will appear as the Node advances. As the Node Stage increases, different buildings, NPCs, and services will become available in the Development Area. The higher the Node Stage, the more complex and populated the Development Area becomes. Development Areas will also vary depending on the Node Type - Economic, Military, Scientific, or Divine; we’ll go into further details on each of those Node Types in future posts in this series.[45] – Margaret Krohn

Conceptual illustration.Nodes that are in the ZOI of more advanced nodes have their progression capped by the more advanced node.[47]

Beginning at Node Stage 3, when a Node advances, it enslaves nearby Nodes and makes them into its Vassals. Vassal Nodes are owned by a Parent Node and must always be at least one Node Stage below the Parent Node. This means that the Vassal Node cannot grow until the Parent Node advances in stage. Vassal Nodes give excess experience to their Parent Node, and are able to have their own Vassals, as long as they fit within the Parent Node’s Zone of Influence. They are subject to the government, alliances, wars, taxes, and trade of their Parent Node, and are able to receive federal aid from them. A Vassal Node cannot declare war on their Parent Node or any of its Vassals. Citizens of Vassals are bound by the diplomatic states of the Parent Node.[41] – Margaret Krohn

The advancement of a node unlocks its unique content, which comes at the cost of locking out an increasing ring of neighboring nodes from progressing to the next stage.[48]

Nodes advance to the first stage quickly. This enables NPC services such as vending or bankingitems.[49]

Less advanced nodes (referred to as vassal nodes) that fall within a more advanced node's ZOI can still gain XP, but must remain at a lower advancement stage than the dominant node.[47]

The vassal system begins when a node hits stage 3 (village), but neighboring nodes lower than stage 3 also block the growth of their immediate neighbors.[50]

A node does not receive XP from the nodes within its ZOI until these nodes have reached their cap.[47]

Players are moved to safety if they intersect with newly spawned assets during node advancement.[51]

Citizens of one node can contribute to the advancement of other nodes.[52]

The exact percentage of advancement from obtaining items or killing monsters is not going to be explicitly known to avoid "gaming" the system.[53]

Different people have different resources invested in nodes progressing and it would be a little "gamey" if you could know exactly what was necessary at that point because that would disincentivize people from participating.[53] – Steven Sharif

Node sieges

As some areas in the world grow, others will fall. This is the foundation of the living, breathing world that is Ashes of Creation, where players will have the ability to make important decisions that matter in the longevity of an area becoming a city, or whether to siege a rival town. Rise above the ashes, create the world around you, and be a part of the story that unfolds because of your actions and decisions.[45] – Margaret Krohn

Node sieges enable players to destroy nodes.[45] This paves the way for new development and access to the locked content in surrounding nodes. Due to this dynamic, political strife and intrigue play an important role in the structure of the world.[1]

Attackers may not be capable of destroying a node. Instead they may carry out precision attacks to disable specific service-oriented buildings within the node. These buildings can be targeted with siege weapons and bombs.[55]

If the node still exists after the siege has ended, citizens will need to obtain the resources needed to rebuild any damaged infrastructure.[56]

You could be more precision oriented in the decision to attack a city. Let's say it's a rival node that's trying to reach you know a node stage five or something and you want to disable their ability for the religious system to progress so you target the temple during the attack, or you want to disable their scholars academy from reaching a higher level so that your nodes can; or you want to disable multiple buildings that allow for experience and quests to be undertaken by its citizenship, which prevents them from keeping up in pace of experience gained with your node. These can be more precision oriented and don't have to effectualize an actual takeover of the node.[55] – Steven Sharif

Sieging nodes will not be an easy task for the attackers. Cities and metropolises will have a considerable defensive advantage.[1]

If you own a home in a node and you don't want to see that home destroyed, you need to defend that city![57] – Steven Sharif

We want combat to be engaging, fun... Right now we've begun the sprint toward Alpha-1 first phase deployment, so we're really looking into the action side of combat right now; and we're building systems for that. And the reason why we are doing that is because tab-targeting has been a staple of MMORPGs for a very long time, even though there's a large interest now in action for MMORPGs and there has been some successful titles with action-oriented, like TERA and BDO. We want to be able to really delve into that development so that we can better understand how to merge tab and action together in the same game, because they are vastly different play-styles.[62] – Steven Sharif

Factions

Because we are non-faction based, you want to grant the user the ability to either do things that are "evil" or "good", so there has to be a plethora of choice on the evil side for them to participate in.[64] – Steven Sharif

PvE

The environment in Ashes of Creation is a visually stunning realm, with fantastical beasts and creations designed to both inspire awe and instill fear. The world is harsh and unforgiving, presenting a clear and present danger to the players. Dungeons, demons and dragons, oh MY! Our unique and adaptive AI means that an encounter with similar creatures will yield a completely different experience to adapt to as a player. Keeping you on your toes for constantly changing responses from your adversary. The world awaits its heroes.[72]

There is going to be a lot of PvE content for all portions of the playerbase... Part of that risk versus reward: Your risk is your time you're putting in to having a chance at getting the reward and successfully completing; and that should feel good based on how much time you devote. Now I know that there's a spectrum of casual and hard-core players in the time there, what we can do, but that's why we have many different content paths that play towards how you affect the world around you.[74] – Steven Sharif

PvE content adapts to the development of the world to avoid repitition.[75]

Whenever you have a player versus environment setting you don't want a stagnant kind of overly repetitive because its lackluster. It does not have that a component that engages.[75] – Steven Sharif

Because players are motivated by different things, because they want something from the game that other players don't want, that's going to cause people to butt heads. Different players are going to want different experiences and the conflict between the two of them will create a bigger and better thing. Out of strife comes rebirth and that's a core symbol, it's a core theme that occurs throughout the game.[57] – Jeffrey Bard

A lot of what we experienced in games that usually come before us is that many things our account bound and they're soulbound to your character... Instead very little here is character bound. Very very little. The vast majority of gear- yes you will get quest related gear as rewards- but it won't be let's say one set in one dungeon and you must run the dungeon over and over. Instead we want to really emphasize the reliance on the economy and crafters and gatherers and processors to support a majority of the gear structure in-game, combined with that of world raid bosses and dungeon bosses; not a repetitive quest line through a single dungeon.[80] – Steven Sharif

Verra is a world with rich and diverse cultures. Much of its important history has been dominated by the major races. Humans of the coast and plains, Orcs within the hills and the marshes, Elves in the forest and the riverlands, and the esteemed Dwarves of the mountains. The major races have held dominance through countless wars and skirmishes between the lesser races of Verra. Decades may pass between these flareups of violence. There are many minor races on Verra. Some of the minor races exist in makeshift villages or tribes if you will. Some of the major villages among the minor races are comprised primarily of the Giants, less reputable sects of Human, Gnomes, and Halflings. The Halflings are not Halflings in a traditional sense but actually half-bloods of different races.[104] – Steven Sharif

Wandering the darker places in the world lie truly sinister abominations of creation. The great churches of civilization often dispatch heroes of the state to eliminate these threats to mortals. There currently exist four great nations on Verra. This is 25 years roughly before the fall: The Aelan Empire, Pyrian Kingdom, the Kaivek Protectorate, and the nation of the Dünzenkell. There was not always only four great nations. Long ago the races were more divided into many nations and city states.[105] – Steven Sharif

In the 7,000 years of recorded history, wars upon wars were fought. Some for land, others for resources, many for beliefs. Royal houses stood and fell over the years. Some now long bereft of lordship. Many city states exist in Verra. Some self-governed bastions of democracy and republics alike. Others are vassal states at the behest of their benefactors.[106] – Steven Sharif

Players can also double down on their archetype choice to strengthen their primary role.[109][110]

We have our eight base archetypes; and the trinity is a pretty strong influence with regards to the eight base classes. However the area in which we begin to play with that line between the trinity is in the secondary classes that you can pick. That's where be begin to blend those spaces and allow people a little bit of influence over their role and whether or not they fit perfectly within a particular category within the trinity.[111] – Steven Sharif

Character appearance

There is a great variation that's going to be available from a character standpoint when creating your character, especially around the face. Whether it be the shape of the jawline, the cheeks, the ears, the nose, the lips. You know we want to provide a lot of options and an agency to the player to customize their character appearance.[124] – Steven Sharif

We want there to be a lot of room for people to manifest their own identity, to role play how they want to from an appearance standpoint. There's going to be parameters within which you will be able to customize a character. We want the culture and the identity of the races to exist in a range that makes them easily identifiable from other players and other cultures. So, because of that, we have to have a spectrum you can exist on. There will be a lot of hair variants you can do, body art tattoos that you can apply. You'll be able to play with the scales of the facial structure, the bones, the height, width, the body fat percentage. You'll be able to add body hair on different parts of the body. If you want to have hair on your feet, you can dial that up.[126] – Steven Sharif

Cosmetics

All skin cosmetic items are cosmetic items only and do not grant the user any other benefit. The lore text is flavor text, and background of the creatures and items in the world of Verra. (Note: Costumes and Mounts may be accessible in Ashes of Creation Apocalypse. We'll notify you when these items have been added.)[140]

I want to make sure that equitable cosmetics both from a quantity and quality standpoint are achievable through in-game achievements. Time, effort should let you be happy with what you can accomplish.[143] – Steven Sharif

In my opinion quality of cash shop cosmetics should be equal to in game achievable cosmetics, but offer a diverse selection of unique looks.[144] – Steven Sharif

Obtaining cosmetics

Not all cosmetics are obtainable through in-game means. These will be purchasable through the cosmetic store.[145]

Cash shop cosmetics will be limited in quantity, limited in time for purchase. They will be unique, but you will also have extremely difficult to gain cosmetics in game as well as unique cosmetics that look great and better... There will be a lot of cosmetics that are achievable in the game because that is a very fun aspect of MMO play.[146] – Steven Sharif

I'm more of the mind that it wouldn't really serve a purpose to have bikini plate armor, just in like reality, if you're going to have armor, it should be protective. I think from a fashion statement is enjoyable for some people, but it's a kind of an immersive issue.[153] – Steven Sharif

We're going for kind of a more realistic look; not necessarily realistic setting, but we want our characters to have weight and kind of feel like they're there.[153] – Jeffrey Bard

Lore

Ashes of Creation is a direct reference to the storyline. Without giving too much away, the phoenix is going to be a persistent symbol throughout the first phase of the storyline, and the world that the players will be inhabiting is a long-lost world that has suffered devastating calamity.[162] – Jeffrey Bard

We're keeping lore very close to the chest and the reason for that is because it is very rich. It is diverse. It will have applications outside of just the MMORPG. We intend to take it much further, but I want it to be something that the players get to reveal themselves, that's not just handed to them and then the experience is lost. They should feel when they're experiencing this that it relates to them on a personal level.[164] – Steven Sharif

It is about mythology and discovering what truths mythologies are talking about and finding out what really happened on this world so long ago; and that's part of that discovery process; and we want people to feel that throughout the game, not just in terms of lore but in terms of the world itself .[165] – Jeffrey Bard

Story arcs

All of the events are based around storytelling. All of the the narrative quests are based around storytelling. All the organizational quests are based around storytelling. You know the game is built from a story basically, so we want to make sure that there's context and relevancy for all of the actions that you're doing in the game.[166] – Jeffrey Bard

The overarching narrative is that players are the returning children of Verra. They will not be characterized individually as "saviors".[167]

Even player driven mechanics will still have story components. There will be a reason why the player driven mechanic is available or required of the player; so you know every system that's created touches a story.[166] – Steven Sharif

Every stage a node develops it's unlocking narratives, storylines, it's changing the spawn population of the area around it, changing what bosses exist, it's triggering events where you may have legendary dragons attack the city. It's basically writing the story of the server based on the actions and determination of the players. So, you may experience a dungeon one month earlier and have a completely different story that relates to this location the next month, because something has changed either geopolitically or from the node standpoint.[168] – Steven Sharif

Progression

Multiple playstyles should be relevant and viable. Additionally, you have a spread between casual players and hard-core players; and most of us exist somewhere on that spectrum. The progression path in a society or religion is more conducive to the time we have to play. Whereas, someone else may be playing several hours a day, and they have a better opportunity for the raid/level progression that might require some more dedication. So we want to have these different progression paths available to accommodate the different times in our lives that we have to play the game. And all of those types of progressions will make us relevant in some way shape or form to the general world.[173] – Steven Sharif

Having the ability to gain power at a sacrifice... That's a way to kind of reach a horizontal type of progression. It may not be entirely, because there could potentially be a meta if balancing isn't done correctly; but the objective there is to make sure we have both vertical and horizontal progression in the game.[171] – Steven Sharif

End game

Part of the whole experience with nodes is that there is no real end-game, in that the world is constantly shifting every day. Month one is going to be really different from month two; and that's for the level 50s and level 1s.[176] – Jeffrey Bard

We want the game to be a living game, which means that all content should be relevant at all times. I’d say that we try to make as little distinction between the leveling up experience and the end game experience as possible. The whole journey is important to us, in order to maximize the fun people have during different stages of the game.[177] – Sarah Flanagan

There will be activities that are present for higher level players to mentor lower level players. Let's say you have a friend who joins later on and you still want to do things with them, there will be things to do. Will you he be able to enter a dungeon of your level and participate? No, because we don't want to inflate or deflate characters and manipulate that type of skill or power. We want that to be something that makes sense for them in a progression standpoint.[182] – Steven Sharif

Class progression

As a player progresses with their primary archetype (primary class), they will have the opportunity to choose a secondary archetype to augment their primary skills with effects from their secondary archetype (secondary class).[183] The combination of primary and secondary archetypes is referred to as a Class.[107][108]

If a Fighter were to choose Mage as a secondary archetype, the fighter would become a Spellsword. This combination opens up augments that can be applied to skills in their primary skill tree. Fighters have a Rush skill that allows them to rush towards a target; and upon reaching the target, deal an amount damage with a chance to knock the target down. A Mage's escape augment could be applied to the rush skill, which would now teleport the player to the target; thus eliminating the charge time on the skill.[183]

Weapon proficiency (based on length of use of a weapon) is not a planned feature.[177]

Q: Are weapons balanced towards a proficiency system (i.e. the longer I use a sword, the better my damage will be), or will it be a normal RPG stat system with no long-term scaling?

A: We will not be using a proficiency system as described, but players will have passives available in their skill tree that will increase effectiveness of certain weapons. Becoming a master of swords will be something that is possible, just not in that particular manner.[177] – Sarah Flanagan

Ashes of Creation is all about providing many progression paths... The reason why we don't like the term endgame is because with the amount of progression that's available with the amount of diversity and player agency that that impacts the world... We kind of want the the weapon system and add an element of that as well... You can determine special effects that proc from currently the combo system right; you can determine ancillary effects that proc based on enchantment types; you can power stone weapons to add different either elemental types of damage and/or energy that kind of play rock paper scissor with player defenses ... and then you can skill tree out how those effects that are granted ... you can make them better you can branch them off into a different direction.[189] – Steven Sharif

Players will have the opportunity to kind of dabble in all of the professions at a very beginners level and then you know that kind of gives them an understanding of what that profession feels like and then allows them to kind of pinpoint the direction that they want to go in to master particular professions.[195] – Steven Sharif

When we reference not being masters of all that doesn't mean you're not a master within your own one of the three artisan types, which is you know crafter or gatherer, processor. You will be a master of one of those, you will not be master of the other two.[194] – Steven Sharif

Religion progression

Changing religion will cause loss of progress in a player's previous religion.[202]

It depends on their dedication to the religion itself; their performance when it comes to certain religion's religious objectives; their contribution to the development of that religion within the world. There's a lot of different markers that we use at each stage to determine how they progress within the religion.[204] – Steven Sharif

Naval progression

Mariner classes (also referred to as boatsmanship classes, boatsman skills or seamanship) contain different skill trees arranged in a similar manner to Artisan classes. As a player gains experience in these different skills they become more adept at using them.[205]

Gunnery

Piloting

Navigation

Boat repair

Ship components

Defensive skills

Utility based skills

You can spec into and kind of create your own class based on what things you're doing on the boat... It's gonna be very similar to in structure to like the artisanship trees, so you'll you'll have your mariner class: You'll have different trees in that class.[205] – Jeffrey Bard

We don’t have a strictly level 25 zone. Instead, that zone might have some level 10 creatures near the road, some level 20 creatures deep in the forest, and some level 30 creatures up the mountain. These ratios will change based on the Nodes that inform them, becoming generally more dangerous as the Node grows. All this civilization attracts the attention of Things-That-Should-Not-Be. This does not mean that wilderness areas are safe, by any means. Some may be safe-er, but all will have dangers that even the most experienced traveler needs to watch out for.[207] – Steven Sharif

As you're leveling up the guild and you're getting these points to either allocate towards expanding the guilds member count or allocate towards adding certain passive abilities that your guild members can gain by being guild members. You're also going to see as you're leveling up the guild through different type of quest-based, participation-based, node-based, organization-based systems and ways that those quests hook into the world. You're also going to see perhaps some augment abilities at the upper tiers of the guild levels become unlocked for certain members that have a classification of officer or knight, will have access to those different types of augment abilities that might get unlocked should you go down the non expansive member lane; and the idea there is to offer these benefits to smaller groups.[208] – Steven Sharif

It's not always going to be combat. You could have an economic focus guild. You could have a trade oriented guild; and there's all sorts of things that you can kind of put together and kind of give your guild its own identity.[208] – Jeffrey Bard

- For example, a Thieves' guild may have objectives and quests toward securing a particular item to enable players to advance within the organization.[213]

Social organizations are going to have questlines that players participate in which some will include sabotage, espionage, intrigue... While it's not necessarily player versus player in the combat sense, it is player versus player in pitting communities in those organizations kind of against each other in a competitive atmosphere, where only some things can be accomplished by certain communities; and not everybody can succeed at a particular task. So, I think that that's a unique way to involve meaningful conflict that doesn't necessarily have to relate to PvP, because obviously we have a lot of PvP systems in the game and and there are many ways for players to participate in player versus player combat; but we also want to make sure that from a progression standpoint, from a system standpoint there are going to be abilities of individuals to follow these questlines, these tasks that will pit organizations against each other, specifically from an organizational standpoint.[214] – Steven Sharif

You're gonna see arguments being used a lot throughout a lot of our systems. When we're talking about the guild system, when we're talking about social organizations, when we're talking about religions. A lot of those things are going to affect how and what you have available to augment your skills with.[215] – Jeffrey Bard

Content that revolves around alliances specifically and progression within the development of that alliance; and the ability to share some common services between guilds that are part of that alliance. I think that additionally allowing alliances to toggle certain relationships with nodes as an interaction is beneficial. That's going to provide an interesting dynamic for players who are either members of the particular node that has the relationship established or members of the Alliance. So I think that obviously building systems is is about creating the channels by which these players can form bonds and the more layers you have around those you know channels of bonding between the different guilds or players, the more sustainable that relationship.[216] – Steven Sharif

Freehold progression

We want there to be progression in many systems and part of the freehold progression is that when you establish these base buildings the longer and more productive you are and exist with that freehold, the more opportunity those buildings will have to both level up: offering new bonuses, new abilities, new capabilities; and just surviving in this world is a feat in and of itself, so it's rewarded by allowing progression with those things.[217] – Steven Sharif

Monster coin progression

In Ashes of Creation a large portion of world events revolve around the environment reacting to the player. This means that as players are exploring the world and developing civilization around them the environment is responding to this encroachment by spawning dynamic events and creatures to attack those developing cities. These events occur in 3 different types: the Legion level the Elite level and the Epic level.[220]

As nodes advance, so does the scale of the monsters.[221] There are tiers of events denoting the caliber of the monsters being spawned.[222]

The tier of the monster coin dictates how powerful the monster is.[223]

Game balance

The way that the systems are being designed from a balancing standpoint we're taking into account how we would like the nodes to change per-se how often and we've designed attrition systems for certain cultures that may have more dominance over others. These are things that in Alpha and Beta we will be testing and watching and making sure that our objective is achieved from a gameplay standpoint and if it's not we'll come back and recalculate.[224] – Steven Sharif

There will be match ups in 1v1s where one class will be superior to another; and that application should be a rock-paper-scissors dynamic. We want there to be counter-play between the different classes... Instead it's going to be a group focused balance, where as long as you have the diversity of classes present, that's going to be an equal level playing field. It's going to be very dependent on skill and strategy.[227] – Steven Sharif

Certain secondary archetypes are capable of "bridging the gap" between their counterpart.[228]

Certain archetypes are capable of moving the gap between their counterpart per-se. If I am a Tank archetype and a Mage is my counter, I can take a Mage secondary and kind of bridge the divide slightly; and then move my identity that direction ever so slightly.[228] – Steven Sharif

Power creep

Power creep is a balance issue... When it comes to gear progression specifically, the idea is to create an open market that is not heavily dependent on soulbound items; and having many item sinks and gold sinks within that economy that allows for the potential degradation and loss of assets within that closed economy; and not introduce items from the marketplace that companies put in from a pay-to-win perspective or from a pay-to-convenience perspective that undermines the economy that players have built. That is a huge mistake that companies have made in the past and that lends to the imbalancing of what designers maybe have actually balanced well.[229] – Steven Sharif

Design

When it comes to how MMO’s have been traditionally designed, most gamers are familiar with two distinct types of gameplay loops: the “theme park”, and the “sandbox”. The vast majority of MMO’s we’ve all seen come and go in the gaming industry have been of the theme park variety – these games put the player onto a specific path, guiding them along, with plenty of pretty sights in between the same old quest hubs, very little in divergent paths, virtually no freedom in player progression. Recently the MMO genre has seen some games of the sandbox nature come onto the scene, but despite the ultimate freedom the sandbox affords players, many are left wanting more, as there is by definition no pre built world content, no human touch, just the vastness of the “sand” for lack of a better term. Thus many MMO players often find themselves caught between the repetitive rock of the theme park or the vast dead spaces of the sandbox’s hard place. This chasm between the state of MMO gameplay loops is where we intend to inject Ashes of Creation’s Node system.[1]

In order for sandbox mechanics to mean something, there must be curated content to accompany the player’s choices. Which means, as the developers, we must create that Themebox style content but for every possible path the community may take.[230] – Steven Sharif

Design pillars

In designing Ashes of Creation, we adhere every detail to five main pillars: Engaging and Immersive Story, a Reactive World, Player Interaction, Player Agency, and Risk vs Reward. Even in the environment, everything you as the player do will tie into these pillars, while everything your guild does, everything your server does will ultimately keep the world fresh, ever-changing, and most importantly... exciting.[231]

In terms of what came before, we're trying to figure out who did what best and take inspiration from that: Move the genre forward; keep things updated and bring it into the 21st century.[232] – Jeffrey Bard

End-game

Part of the whole experience with nodes is that there is no real end-game, in that the world is constantly shifting every day. Month one is going to be really different from month two; and that's for the level 50s and level 1s.[176] – Jeffrey Bard

We want the game to be a living game, which means that all content should be relevant at all times. I’d say that we try to make as little distinction between the leveling up experience and the end game experience as possible. The whole journey is important to us, in order to maximize the fun people have during different stages of the game.[177] – Sarah Flanagan

Open development

Intrepid Studios has embraced an open (transparent) development approach, rather than sharing information through carefully curated press releases and announcements.[233]

I don't answer to a board. I don't answer to a publisher. We answer to our players; and we try to be as transparent as possible with showing our progress; and showing it in a timely manner.[234] – Steven Sharif

I think that we live in an age where it's easy to be transparent if you're not trying to hide something. The downside is if you're showing something that's not a completed or finished product, it is incumbent upon the viewer to understand that fact.[233] – Steven Sharif

There are obviously going to be some aspects of the development that we will not reveal, like lore and some system mechanics in order not to spoil the game for release.[235][236] – Steven Sharif

Expansions

Because of the modularity of a lot of the systems that we're working on, it's not too hard to iterate and implement new things... We're planning on going on a quarterly/ monthly cycle to continue to push out new content.[249] – Jeffrey Bard

The quarterly cycle for the big content is good for us and then, as you said, those modular components to our mechanisms in the game allow for us to introduce smaller content patches that can be seen in real time in the world.[249] – Steven Sharif

We don't intend to a wordsmith around future charge for DLC content. As a subscription model, that's part of the agreement between us as a Studio and you guys: That there will be regularly scheduled updates and chapters; and that subscription is what allows you to access that content.[250] – Steven Sharif

Pay to win

"Ashes of Creation will not be pay to win, that is our pledge to the community. One of the core principles we set forth with Ashes of Creation is a very strong desire to maintain the game's even playing field."

My definition of pay to win is really anything that affects the in-game economy, the in-game action pool, your abilities and/or skills... In my opinion the inventory slots and the XP potions would be considered pay to win.[253] – Steven Sharif

Intrepid will maintain 100% creative control over Ashes and our partners My.com and Mail.ru shares our vision for Ashes, as this was very important to us. This means our stance on p2w for the game. This partnership allows us as a Studios to focus on the development of the game and allows us to feel comfortable with the level of service that we know my.com and Mail.ru can provide our glorious community.[256] – Steven Sharif

Today I have confirmed business model will be subscription with no box cost, cosmetic only marketplace (will match NA).[257] – Steven Sharif

Payments

It will be possible to register with Intrepid, in order to play on NA servers. In which case, your account and billing info would be handled solely by Intrepid. My.com will be responsible, with collaboration from Intrepid, for EU accounts and servers.[260] – Steven Sharif

I want to incentivize purchase in the cosmetic shop for sustainability of what expansions we have intended, since we are not a box cost. I want to incentivize purchase by offering limited items: limited time, limited quantity, so you have confidence that when you purchase them, they won't be offered later on in some other way.[143] – Steven Sharif

We plan to include a shop for micro transactions. The shop will only include cosmetic items. Nothing in our shop will ever be pay to win as we believe this practice greatly hurts the MMORPG genre.[142]

We can push the limits a little bit on the graphical fidelity, especially using Unreal Engine 4... My desire was not to see very cartoony games. I'm not a big fan of highly stylized art.[269] – Steven Sharif

You will see in the different races that are available from a player character standpoint a lot of different influences that reflect many cultures in the world: Not just European, not just Africa, not Mesoamerican. These cultures are going to be present in many of the races.[277] – Steven Sharif

The idea is just to find a base component in the real world as a starting point and then to begin to fantasize.[271] – Steven Sharif

Cultural references

There will be real-world cultural references, particularly with regards to real-world holidays and historical events.[278]

These won't be out of place in terms of immersion. They will be homages.[278]

There will be some real world references, particularly with regards to potentially real world holidays as well as some historical events or cultures. For example the PAX East kind of ship that was named Eleanor that we released a cosmetic of, you know, being a reference to the Eleanor ship that the tea was thrown off of; or kind of colonialesque look.[278] – Steven Sharif

The antagonists in this game are definitely dark... We're not going grimdark at all, but there are parts of it that get that way.[282] – Jeffrey Bard

Game difficulty

People who put more time and effort into it are definitely going to get more out of it but that doesn't mean that person who logs in once a week won't be able to have fun so it's just a matter of the scale of stuff that you're going after... Running a caravan is not gonna be the same thing every time you do it. You might be able to find like a super secret path that nobody knows about... and you exploit it for a while and nobody knows and then eventually somebody sees you and suddenly that route becomes a lot more difficult so you know that's kind of the way we really want that emergent gameplay to kind of come out of those options that we give you guys; and a lot of it is gonna come down to other players making it more or less difficult for you.[283] – Jeffrey Bard

There's a ton of room for difficulty on whatever scale... In a living world everything becomes much more difficult.[283] – Peter Pilone

Learning curve

Target demographic

I think our target demographic, obviously we have a very high graphic fidelity in the game that's attractive to younger players, but at the same time we have a very roleplay game orientation - a kind of a play back to that pen-and-paper Dungeons & Dragons feel that perhaps younger generations may not know but is very near and dear to the hearts of older gamers. So I think we have a broad appeal from a demographic standpoint.[284] – Steven Sharif

Player types

A guy who wrote a book on game design, called Bartle, breaks gamers up into different categories. We will often talk about the different categories of gamers and trying to satisfy their needs.[285] – Akil Hooper

The most compelling design argument for how those different sects of gamers interact with each other is dependant from the design standpoint of interdependencies in the systems. So, for example if as a Raider or as a PvPer you're looking for the best gear, you're going to devote your time towards leveling up and going out and participating in the things you enjoy like pvping, perhaps going for caravans or sieging cities and castles and all that type stuff. If you want the best gear, you're going to have to to rely on a person who's devoted their time towards crafting potentially; and they may not be a PvPer but they have a place in your wheelhouse because you need their services. And then that crafter is going to need a person who is either a gatherer or plays the economy as a merchant in the nodes with the auction houses that are regionalized. They're going to have to work with a person who specializes in trade that takes caravans with either mercenary groups or other guilds that are PvPers between the nodes to get the resources they need. Building dependencies on different groups or factions of players that exist within a large world like this MMORPG is what kind of solidifies the bonds that allow for them to exist either harmoniously, or at least in a way that they know you need those types of players.[285] – Steven Sharif

Casual vs. hardcore players

Casual players will have an impact because what they do is necessary for the health of the server.[286]

There are events that are that are happening in the world in the game that you won't need to be a hardcore player to impact and join. For example, the triggered events from the PvE standpoint against the cities; the trades of the caravans; those natural battlegrounds that exist; the castle sieges you can login for. There is a lot of systems that are at play where a person can simply log in, participate, have fun, be impactful and then log out.[286] – Steven Sharif

Mentor program

There will be a mentorship program where upper-level players are able to benefit from partying and/or helping lower level players; and getting them situated in the game.[176]

There will be activities that are present for higher level players to mentor lower level players. Let's say you have a friend who joins later on and you still want to do things with them, there will be things to do. Will you he be able to enter a dungeon of your level and participate? No, because we don't want to inflate or deflate characters and manipulate that type of skill or power. We want that to be something that makes sense for them in a progression standpoint.[182] – Steven Sharif

There may be separate servers in the EUregion based on language type.[288]

There's localization that will be present in the German and French Russian languages to start; and then we intend to also localize in Italian, Polish and Spanish. So servers will be allocated within the region as being one of those language type servers. So it's not going to be per country per se as it might be per language.[288] – Steven Sharif

Minimum specification of a 2014-2015 rig with a mid to high range graphics card from that era.[295]

The target is a five-year-old system when we launch should be able to run the game... You're looking at kind of like mid to high range graphic card from that era and you should be good to go.[295] – Jeffrey Bard

I think our min spec right now is targeting 960. Basically, the goal is to have computer when we launch five years back be viable. So we're not targeting super high-end systems. Unreal gives us a lot of capability to tune down fidelity as we need it, so we've got a lot of options in there. Right now it plays extremely well even on lower end systems. And we haven't even done any optimization.[296] – Jeffrey Bard

The game will be highly customizable from a settings standpoint. If you don't quite have the rig necessary to run it, you can dial the game settings down.[295]

Highly scalable options to adjust rendering and particle effects will be offered.[297]

Unreal engine makes it really fast to iterate... Compared to other gaming engines, I can do something in a hour that would take eight hours to do in another engine.[302] – Jeffrey Bard

We're ripping out most of the network code that Unreal has and putting in our own just so that it works with our game and so everything is as efficient as possible. We're not going to have any replication problems because we're building it ourselves.[303] – Jeffrey Bard

One of the most important things about Epic Games as the creators of Unreal Engine is the way they've allowed developers to have access to the source code. To be able to do that makes the engine very versatile.[303] – Steven Sharif

We'll have a multitude of servers located throughout to the various regions of the world; and those servers will be good connection points for- and will be driven by- I mean there's two types of servers I'm sorry: For the alpha-1 arena those will be driven by the party leader right; and wherever whatever region they have selected if they invite friends to their squad or whatever, they'll be able to play on that region. With regards to live launch when the server's go live, you'll be selecting a server to play on; and that will be your character's home; and that server you'll be aware of where that server is located usually by either a ping or a region that's notated on next to the server.[308] – Steven Sharif

At this stage we do not have numbers on how many different servers will exist for different regions. We've said in the past 8-10,000 concurrent users per server is what we'd like to aim for. Obviously, the number of servers that exist in a region are going to be dependent on the population that's playing.[315] – Steven Sharif

Q: When you say you no region locking or IP blocking, does this refer to all regions or just only Europe, Russia or North America?

A: Currently that refers to regions that are territories under our license agreement with My.com and Mail.ru, which is Europe and Russia as it relates to our North American servers as well. However, moving forward should we announce additional strategic partners for foreign territories, it would be a red line for us as well not to allow for any region locking or IP blocking.[318] – Steven Sharif

Server history

We're gonna keep track of the history of the world so that we can tell people the story up to the current day. A player who's brand new, who's come in at the six-month mark can take a look at each server, what each server has done, how each server has tackled the storyline; and they can decide for themselves what community they want to join; what version of the world that they want to take part in.[322] – Jeffrey Bard

There will be integrations available for streaming services such as Twitch and a few other services, but it's not something that will be exposed through an API just yet.[339]

We will have a lot of customization present in the both from a UI perspective as well as different data points that will be naturally in the game, but we don't want to open up the mod game just yet. That might be a decision we change in the future but, it's not planned for release.[339] – Steven Sharif

The idea is to make a one-stop-shop from the company when it comes to in-game systems... We don't really want to have addons in my opinion.[335] – Steven Sharif

Ashes of Creation Apocalypse

The standalone prequel to the upcoming epic MMORPG Ashes of Creation - both a testing ground for new systems and content, as well as a unique last-man-standing action game where magic, steel, and chaos reign supreme in a high fantasy, free-to-play experience.[366]